The Nag

 

 

 

 

The Nag

I try to smile at the morning,

even tho it shambles in

unsure of what to do with itself and 

wants advice. "You're all

the same, " I mutter.

Then you come the way you do,

pulling my hair.

"Look at me, look at me,"you say,

even tho you never see a thing 

except what isn't there.

"Do this, do that!" I pry

your centipede legs

off my neck, hundreds of them, each

one shoe'ed 

with crawling demand.

Talk to me," you insist,

adjusting 

your face in the mirror,

deaf as a blue-eyed white cat.

Explosions and tremors

 

make your bed. Rage

and misunderstanding

call you mother.

Peace will

never know you.

 

 

"I am the goat," I say

"who walks alone,"

and turn to ask

the morning

what I can do.

April 2022

posted for dVerse Poets

Open Link Night

Images: The Smiling Spider, 1891, © Odilon Redon   Public Domain

‘Soulmate’ © Księżycolica, via internet  Fair Use

Asylum

 

 

 

 

"..Let the doctor and the lawyer do as much as they can.
Let the springtime begin, let the boy become a man.
I have wasted too much time 

just to sing you this sad song..."~James Taylor, 1971 

 

 

 

Asylum

 

 

 

In the madhouse

on beds of daggers

we slept like crickets

chirping to ourselves

while they tried their best

to make us cannibals.

 

The nuns were worse than

lawyers, praying like accordions,

tracking their sins into our soft 

wax skulls, wheezing like roosters

when one of us cried, laying the greasy ribs

of Jesus on our plates.

They kept you behind

door number six. I'd go to you

with a stolen key, when the noon

smelled bright as carnations, 

when the nights were

more purple than the jacarandas.

 

You spoke of your father

dead of snakebite,

a clockwork marvel with

his million-dollar suit of skin,

and your mother

with the viper between her lips.

I remember your kiss

astringent with reason

as bitter lemons, and the way

your hair blew back from

your dog-brown eyes like poisonous

smoke from the oleanders.

I thought these things

as beautiful as angels

whispering in the dahlias

when I was lost in the asylum,

when the doctors did all they could

to see that we ate each other

down to the bone.

April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Inspired by the words of Federico Garcia Lorca,

and a dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Madhouse, 1812-1814 © Francisco Goya  Public Domain

Vase with Carnations, 1886, © Vincent Van Gogh    Public Domain 

 

Wildfire

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wildfire

 

 

 

Time is a wildfire loose in the willows

burning soft-stemmed boughs to hissing smoke.

Their weeping won't save them, or their green hearts,

nor the pleading of oxen, burnt out of their yokes.

It runs its red leg 'cross the suck of the slough

to harvest sheep's breath in its ragged pillows,

to garland the branch with burnt black buds.

Time is a wildfire loose in the willows.

Time races, time flies, time burns the bridges.

It eats church and saloon out of house and hope.

It's tongue licks the moonlight off the moon's mirror

and boils rainy hours to hissing smoke.

Time is a fire, time is a melting

that feeds on the whole and ashes the parts.

Time burns up May-brides into sere widows;

their weeping won't save them, or their green hearts.

And when black-cloud crows show to pick my bones

I'll say come, children come, and don't come slow.

Time's a quick flame, and we are its smoke.

Time was my harness; I'm soon out of its yoke.

April 2022

 

 

 

 posted for Fireblossom 

at The Sunday Muse:

Word Garden Word List #19:A.E.Housman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: This poem is in the cascade form(with a few liberties,) which I felt fit in with Housman's general style, tho since it has been invented since his time, of course he never used it.

 

 

 

Images; Landscape Of Ruins And Fires, 1914 © Felix Valloton, manipulated   Public Domain

Wheatfield With Crows, 1890. © Vincent Van Gogh  manipulated,     Public Domain

Three Tigers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Three Tigers

(a 55)

Three tigers by the sea

waiting for my company,

frightened by the gunner's moon;

three tigers hungry soon.

Three tigers in the millet;

artist, lover and a poet

find their game, make it run,

eat the work when they have done.

Two wet tigers in the storm;

 I laugh and keep the good one warm.

 

 

 

 

 April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets

Open Link Night

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Images: Dream Caused By The Flight Of A Bee Around A Pomegranate A Second Before Awakening,1941, ©Salvador Dali  Fair Use

Tiger In A Tropical Storm-Surprised, 1891, ©Henri Rousseau  Fair Use

 

Gifting Of The Birds

 

 

 

 

 Gifting Of The Birds

They say a princess

will have the Fae come to her birth

to make her fate with augury for gifts,

but the peasant dreams in birds

 rainbowed as the sky, as sleek as night,

gathered round her cradle

with a liquid blackbird murmur

with two tumbling raven feathers

with six scarlet cardinal sins,

swarming seven snowy days

with all their gifts and curses, not sure

which to give her, some of this and some of that,

sum of love and losing, morning song

or evening silence, heart of grace,

tongue of willow, green mossflower, desert spine,

 

hard horse apples or sweet blood-oranges

of November moon, all or none of these

before they fly, on to the next accouchement. 

Still from time to time she sees them perching,

come back to check their work

cocking tiny heads aslant,

looking but not telling, never saying

more than a bird might say

about the time that's coming

when all gifts will be opened,

all the curses told.

What will you do at last, 

their bright eyes seem to wink,

with what we gave you,

before you can do no more?

 

 

 

 April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for 

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Birds of Paradise, © Vincente Manansala  Fair Use

Bird in Spectacles, author unknown, via Sunday Muse   Fair Use

 

Aubade Of The Scorpions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aubade Of The Scorpions

 

 

 

At night the little scorpions come down

to watch us playing at our poison kisses

to study from the dustbath where we drown

 

the sting that sinks the deepest when it misses.

I found flowers once where you had touched me;

black poppies sown in moon-distempered hisses.

 

Now the sun is crawling through the ivy,

its dawn a flickered fire burning wishes.

You're a green ghost spitting from a tree;

 

promises float away like silver fishes

and Love's a child who suddenly confesses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets:

Meeting The Bar: Aubade

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Crustaceans c.1873 ©Raimundo Petraroja    Fair Use

The Evening Gown, 1954, ©Rene Magritte     Fair Use

 

Season's Whisper

 

 

 

Season's Whisper

(A Quadrille)

 

 

Birds falter

from the sky. Kapitans cry.

Bodies lie,

blind eyes on streets

rubbed down to bone.

 

Still

the season whispers.

 

Living wings fly,

buds swell like grief unbound.

The wilding wind 

knows nothing

of our long drown.

 

The season whispers.

Life is found.

 

 

April 2022 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets:

Quadrille

and 

for earthweals' weekly challenge:

Radical Hope

Note: "..Kapitan is a commissioned officer rank ..in..the NATO officers rank system..[adopted by Ukraine,]used to specify commanding officers of company-sized units..."~wikipedia

Images:Detail of Scene in Bucha, Ukraine, April 2, 2022 after Russian retreat, ©Reuters/Zohra Bemsemra, cropped to sepia,  Fair Use

Magnolia buds against March tree canopy, 2016, © joyannjones